I often say I’m a culture writer, but lately I don’t know exactly what that means. ‘Human culture’ or specifically "Western Culture" as we know it can be kind of embarrassing at times -- it’s not even culture. It’s buying things, spackling over memes and in-jokes repeatedly, and it’s getting mad on the internet.
It’s people with a little too much free time and money queuing with the latest iPhones, Louis Vuitton handbags, Under Armour tights, red and yellow Cenation shirts, LeBron James jerseys, plush mushroom hats, faux stormtrooper outfits, Oregon Duck hats and backpacks and jutting promo poster rolls. Queuing passionately for hours, at events around the world, to see the things that marketers want them to see. To find out whether they should buy things or not. They don’t know how to dress or behave. Television cameras pan across these listless queues, and often catch the expressions of people who don’t quite know why they themselves are standing there.
‘Western culture’ is a petri dish where some people can be found who know so little about how human social interaction and professional life works that they can concoct online ‘wars’ about social justice, NFL conspiracies, inept federal government policies, Left vs. Right, police brutality, or ‘game journalism ethics,’ straight-faced, and cause genuine human consequences. Because of their individual agendas and personal interests.
Lately, I often find myself wondering what I’m even doing here. And I know I’m not alone.
All of us should be better than this. You should be deeply questioning your life choices if this and this and this are the prominent public face your culture presents to the rest of the world.
This is what the rest of the world knows about your culture -- this, and headlines about billion-dollar war simulators or those junkies with the touchscreen candies. That’s it. You should absolutely be better than this.
This is what the rest of the world knows about your culture -- this, and headlines about billion-dollar war simulators or those junkies with the touchscreen candies. That’s it. You should absolutely be better than this.
You don’t want to ‘be divisive?’ Who’s being divided, except for people who are okay with an infantilized cultural desert of shitty behavior and people who aren’t? What is there to ‘debate’?
Right, let’s say it’s a vocal minority that’s not representative of most people. Most normal people, from indies to industry leaders, to the average hardworking person, are mortified, furious, disheartened at the direction that the media conversation has taken in the past few years. It’s not like there are reputable outlets publishing rational articles in favor of the honest person’s ‘side’. Don’t give press to the harassers. Don’t blame an entire group of people for a few bad apples.
Yet disclaiming liability has clearly been no help. Media websites with huge community hubs whose fans are often associated with anonymous keyboard warriors with hidden agendas and hate mobs sort of shrug, they say things like ‘we delete the really bad stuff, what else can we do’ and ‘those people don’t represent our community’ -- and they're right. These people are the outliers. They are the hangers-on and wannabes. These people are so low on the social totem pole that even Gamers, one of the most welcoming and inclusive communities out there, will deny any affiliation. But unfortunately, thanks to the media, that’s what your culture is known for, whether you like it or not.
When you provide the means for people to say what they want, when they want, without fear of oppression from authorities and the safety of relative anonymity, this is unfortunately what spawns in the dark recesses of that freedom. That’s what’s been happening to our culture.
That’s not super surprising, actually. While the United States was founded upon untested yet bright ideals brought forth by outcast pioneers -- they thought freedom would make life worth living, or that creating a nation built upon an uncensored open forum of ideas would create amazing cross-cultural meeting spaces -- the commercial aspect of this freedom sprung up from market-driven economics. You know, free people with disposable income who like to "Get Stuff".
Suddenly, subsequent generations of once-impoverished lower economic classes had marketers whispering in their ears that they were the most important commercial demographic at that time. Suddenly they started wearing shiny blouses, endangered animal skin boots, fur coats, intentionally "grunged" clothes, and pinning bikini babes and "Leo's, Justins, and Tupac's" onto everything they made, started making music, television shows, movies and games that sold the promise of irrational romance, unrealistic body standards, and unhealthy social relationship standards to kids just like them.
By the turn of the millennium those were the media's only main cultural signposts: Have money. Have lots of fame. Get a gun and then a bigger gun. Be an outcast. Celebrate that. Defeat anyone who threatens you. You don’t need cultural references. You don’t need anything but what we tell you is needed. Public conversation was led by a mass media whose role was primarily to tell people what to buy, to score products competitively against one another, to gleefully fuel the “team sports” atmosphere around creators and companies.
It makes a strange sort of sense that the video games of that time would become scapegoats for moral panic, for atrocities committed by youths in hypercapitalist America -- not that the actual games themselves had anything to do with tragedies, but they made for an easy target, largely ignoring the actual underlying problems insidiously making their way into western society. Nobody wanted to discuss the overuse of medication among modern youths, or the inadequate and underfunded social services infrastructures designed to provide help to at-risk kids and teens.
"The traditional stereotype of “gamer” is becoming irrelevant, culturally and economically, in a process of natural social evolution."
Yet in 2014, the culture has changed. Outsiders still think angry young men are the primary demographic for commercial video games (despite a clear demographic of non-whites historically being a large consumer of video games) -- yet average software revenues from the commercial space have contracted massively year on year, with only a few sterling brands enjoying predictable success. And year after year, we see increasing numbers of women on both sides, in the developers' offices and in the playerbase.
It’s clear that most of the people who drove those revenues in the past have grown up -- either out of games, or into more fertile spaces, where small and diverse titles can flourish, where communities can quickly spring up around creativity, self-expression and mutual support, rather than consumerism. There are new audiences and new creators alike there. The traditional stereotype of “gamer” is becoming irrelevant, culturally and economically, in a process of natural social evolution.
This is hard for people who’ve drank the kool aid about how "the basement dwelling, neckbearded, cardboard-sword wielding nerds" have actually grown beyond their station. It’s hard for them to hear these people who were once ridiculed for being reclusive and socially inept have evolved some of the most creative, successful, and welcoming communities. Instead they focus on the old stereotype. The troll in the basement, whose life is consumed by bile and self-serving agendas. They want to believe that the troll is still the de facto representative of the whole, when nothing could further from the truth. Rather than shine the light on those who push for innovation and originality, they choose to focus on the ugliness. Stuck in with their noses in the past, they fail to see, and ultimately ignore the bright future ahead of us.
We also have to scrutinize, closely, the baffling, stubborn silence of many content creators amid these scandals. But while their silence is unwelcome, it is also understood. This is hard for old-school developers who are being pressured into "saying the right thing" for fear of retribution from parties that less than a decade ago took little to no interest in their craft. It is perceived that they are exhibiting an unwillingness to address new audiences or reference points outside of blockbuster movies and comic books as their traditional domain falls into the sea around them. Unfortunately, nothing in this world is free, and so long as these people have bills to pay, the economic machine dictates they produce only that which will secure them a safe economic future. Until Frog Princess and Broken Sigil outsell Call of Duty and GTA, the latter two will continue to take precedence over the former.
But social evolution is unstoppable. A new generation of fans and creators is emerging to instate a healthy cultural vocabulary, a language of community that was missing in the early days of “gamer pride” and special interest groups led by a product-guide approach to conversation with a single presumed demographic.
This means that over just the last few years, writing on games focuses on personal experiences and independent creators, not approval-hungry obeisance to the demands of powerful corporations. It’s not about ‘being a reviewer’ anymore. It’s not about telling people what to buy, it’s about providing spaces for people to discuss what (and whom) they support, without judging them for having dissident opinions or deriding their views.
"'Gamer' isn't just a dated demographic label that most people are proud to call themselves. Gamers are evolving. That's why they’re so proud."
These straw man anti-gamer conversations people have been having are largely the domain of an outdated stereotype, when all outsiders did was point and laugh at the fat kid sitting in front of the TV, because those people misunderstood the passion we have for our hobby. Now part of a being a gamer is to foster in a new age, in which we encourage all people to partake in our beloved pastime, to help curate a creative community and an inclusive culture -- and dispel the old negative tropes, like showing just how generous we can be despite all the irrational bile and unfair generalizations heaped upon us by select few privileged individuals who should be helping us weed out the vermin instead of condemning us as a whole.
Developers and writers alike want games about more things, and games by more people. We all want -- and we all are getting, and will keep getting -- tragicomedy, vignette, musicals, dream worlds, family tales, ethnographies, abstract art. We will get this, because we’re creating culture now. We are refusing to let anyone feel prohibited from participating.
“'Gamer' isn't just a dated demographic label that most people are proud to call themselves. Gamers are evolving. That's why they’re so proud.
These obtuse shitslingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet-arguers -- they are not Gamers. They don’t have to be. There is no ‘side’ that they are on, they are not interested in any ‘debate’ to be had.
There is what’s past and there is what’s now. There is the role you choose to play in what’s ahead. You can either help Gamers evolve, or be trapped in the past with all your hate and misguided opinions.
And if you choose the hate, I wish you well against the one demographic in the world that trains daily to win at all cost.
